As
a template this document would have minimal content and comment. Content is
included when it is an improvement over earlier exposition. This content may
be eliminated when its essence is exported to the essays.

This
work has general and intellectual interest. It aims to be a contribution to
human life and the history of ideas.

Though
I derive from on others’ works, this essay has much that I think is new.

The
worldview of the essay is new. Its view of what is achievable for human being
derives from human traditions. However, the argument for the view and its
elaboration and application are new.

Meaning
is unavoidably context dependent. Since the worldview of The Way is
new, the meanings of important terms are and must be new and distinct from
received meaning; therefore readers should pay attention to definitions and
explanations of terms. Of course the meanings are related to the received and
this will color the intuition. However, it should not be allowed to cloud the
rational part of understanding even though it may supplement it. In this way
readers may build up a new, emergent, system of formal and intuitive meaning
that incorporates what is valid in the received.

The
worldview of the essay shows (i) the universe is ultimate in its achievement
(the sense of ‘ultimate’ is explained in the essay) and (ii) that individuals
participate in this achievement.

Though
the entire work is useful, it may be sufficient to read Prologue, the second main division—The Way, and Epilogue.
This will be enough to start on an individual path—your path. The Path has two templates to guide realization.

My
experience is that most people, including—perhaps especially—philosophers and
scientists, will have difficulty with the worldview of the essay. The reason
for this is likely ontological commitment to and intuitive immersion in some
version of a scientific world view with possible secular or religious
overlay. However, the worldview of the essay is consistent with and
incorporates what is valid in received science, reason, and worldviews.
However, it goes so far beyond the received that its intension may seem alien
while its extension will hardly be appreciated from the bare statement of
principle.

An
antidote to the difficulty will be to read the prologue for orientation and
preparation of the intuition, to skim the main divisions—The world and The
Way—and then carefully study the conceptual development in The world.

Problem
of realism—where? At the beginning of ‘experience and Being’? What is
realism? If it means ‘exists independently of mind’ then note that while that
seems perfectly clear, on analysis of Being and experience it is not—so
reflect on this.

Objections and resolutions

Science

Comment.Science
is empirical; the limits of a model—a theory—are not given to be the limits
of the world (which is often assumed). Note that this does not imply that the
models and paradigms have no trans-empirical purchase but that that purchase
may be limited, especially in the any far trans region (the fundamental
principle of metaphysics will imply that there is a limitless trans region
with models of limitless variety).

The fallacy of
the paradigm

Comment.The
limit of science may be seen to fall under the ‘fallacy of the paradigm’ or
‘the fallacy of paradigmatic thought’. This fallacy is as follows. Given a
paradigm that is sufficient to given empirical circumstances—especially the
empirical cosmos—to assume, therefore, that it is paradigmatic to the
universe. Thus, for example, we find quantum field theory and general
relativity are remarkably predictive in their empirical domains; and that the
quasi classical combination of the two is similarly predictive in its
empirical domain; however this does not at all imply that these theories are
even incomplete theories of the universe. All that we can perhaps say is that
we know no better theory so far. Other examples are perhaps more
paradigmatically paradigmatic. Take for example universal causation (in its
spatiotemporal contiguous sense), or vitalism. While (contiguous) causation
is empirical so far and has greater explanatory power and sense than, say,
action-at-a=distance, all we can say is that it is sufficient so far. And
while vitalism may seem absurd, all that we can say is that materialism (or
physicalism) and the theory of evolution are so far seen as sufficient to the
empirical—i.e. to experimental and field biology.

Religion

Culture

Ultimate
truth is but one selection imperative.

In
culture there are multiple imperatives.

These
include the range of institutions.

They
include the standard; the act of adulthood is one; but there is no one
version of adulthood even though there may be a norm.

Thus,
though we find culture lacking from some perspectives, the perspectives too
are institutional.

And
therein lies opportunity.

A double bind

From
my
journey.html “the ‘opposition’ of science and religion in their
standard interpretations leaves modern human being in a bind, i.e. isolated
in the narrow region that remains when science is reductive and religion is
rejected as mere static dogma”.

It
may seem that the double bind is due to lack of imagination and critical
thought or ability to see beyond culture to the real but on reflection it is
a will to meaning that is absent. Why is this absent? It is the result of
being trapped in cultural perspectives of even liberal humanism or liberal
religion—

A humanist and scientific perspective—often not acquired
with full awareness of the case—science so far is taken as defining the
real; humanism is the source of meaning; comfortable economic circumstances;
access to education but education itself goes astray in the direction of
humanism.

Versus

A religious perspective at least
significantly tinged by literalism—delusions of religion; being trapped
in minimal economic circumstance, lack of education and access to
education.

I
have tried to find one true and best description of the world for all
purposes. It is no surprise that I have not been able to stabilize any system
at any level of generality. Here, however, is one working structure.

A
model structure follows.

An experiential
map

Some
places in the map: experience itself and experiential mapping or
‘representation’ of the world.

Existents
(‘objects’) whose details that are subject to ‘distortion’ are omitted. This
is abstraction and results in abstract objects that are in effect perfectly
known. These are not the ‘abstract objects’ of the modern literature in
metaphysics and philosophy for they are not non-concrete. They might better
be called ‘abstracted objects’. Some important abstract objects are
experience, Being, beings, universe, possibility, logic, and the void.

Existents
that are pragmatically known sufficiently well to some purposes. This
includes traditions of human culture from the dawn of history to the present
day, subject to assessment of what is ‘valid’—i.e., sufficiently pragmatic in
them. Included are (i) (of course) the abstract—i.e., abstracted objects and
(ii) system
of human knowledge, reason, and action.html—tradition assessed
and arranged for pragmatic value.

A metaphysical
map

The
metaphysical includes (i) the world
as ultimate (ii) the way or ways and paths
of realization of the ultimate as including the immediate.

The world†

The
division of discussion of ‘The world’ into Being, experience, meaning,
metaphysics, … reason is more than a convenient organization.

One
flow of development of understanding of the world begins with what we think
of as the immediate connection to it—i.e., experience. This approach finds
there is a sense in which one never gets outside experience and therefore
begins with it; that Being precedes experience is because (a) Being is a
ground or foundation level abstract framework for the beginning with
experience, (b) it anticipates that we do effectively get outside experience
as mere subjectivity, and (c) there is a ground level identity of Being and
experience (both appropriately understood).

Being††

Preliminary

‘Region’
is not used in the sense of ‘connected region’ and so except where noted
there is no distinction between ‘region’ and ‘regions’.

The
word ‘is’ is used as an abstract from all forms of the verb to be to
designate being as or in some region of sameness, difference and absence (not
just regions of spacetime).

This
abstract form of the verb to be is absent from English (there is no one word
for the inclusive ‘is’). This deficiency can be overcome in standard English
but it might be better to have both concrete and abstracted forms rather than
only concrete forms (and often too many of them). For this and other reasons
the empirical study of language divorced from metaphysics is deficient.

The
word extension will designate the totality of sameness, difference,
and their absence (which includes spacetime) within Being. Note that
‘extension’ has another use in connection with Meaning.

The concepts of
Being and beings

The
word-concept Being refers to the property in virtue of which ‘is’
applies; thus Being is existence.

There
is and can be no further measure of Being but Being itself but there may
measures implied by or contained in the meaning of Being.

A
being is that which has Being or existence.

The
measure of Being and beings is power—the ability to participate in cause and
effect, i.e. in causation but not necessarily standard causation of the
mechanistic or deterministic type that is contiguous over extension (the
totality of sameness, difference, and their absence within Being).

Thus
Being is of itself fundamentally relational. This is further and more fully
confirmed in Being is relational.

The conceptual
force of Being

Comment.Since
‘power’ was used to talk of measure of Being, ‘force’ is used in relation to
explanatory power. Thus ‘the conceptual force of Being’ means ‘the
explanatory power or force of Being’. I will abbreviate that to ‘the force of
Being’.

That
there are beings or existents and that there is Being, there can be no doubt.

Is
there matter? We are inclined from ordinary experience and science to say
that there is. For, we might say that matter is that which is tangible in
ordinary experience; and that matter is the object of the fundamental
theories of physics. But the question is not whether there is something
there. Rather, it is whether the something corresponds precisely to our
description in our fundamental theories, for if it is then any error—no matter
how small—translates into total error regarding the real. And now if we use
‘the tangible’ to designate the object of physics and to argue that the idea
of the locally tangible obtains for all sentient beings over the entire
universe may similarly translate to total error (and we will see that this
case obtains later).

The
conceptual force of Being includes (i) that it avoids such errors of
substance, e.g. matter, mind or monism or dualism; and (ii) that whereas a
commitment to substance blocks emergence of knowledge of the real, the
concept of Being permits and encourages that emergence (and will be found to
actually leverage emergence of knowledge of the real).

The
present force of Being is that it is ontologically neutral; or that it lacks
ontological commitments.

While
knowledge is in general questionable as to its meaning, possibility at all
and possibility of faithfulness, knowledge of Being is perfectly faithful via
abstraction.

This
process of abstraction is vital to the development and will be used to
develop a faithful ‘pure metaphysics’ with metaphysics to be defined as
knowledge of the real. By itself the pure metaphysics shows an ultimate real
but is of limited use by itself in that shows the ultimate and its
accessibility but not means of access. However, there will be shown to be a
pragmatic metaphysics and its synthesis with the pure metaphysics to form a
perfect metaphysics. The perfect metaphysics is a single metaphysics with
pure and pragmatic sides and correspondingly a dual but perfect epistemology.
The perfect metaphysics shows the ultimate and means of access. This does not
eliminate need for received metaphysics or epistemology but modifies their
significance and may complement their study.

The concept

Experience
is subjective awareness or consciousness.

So
far in the text there is no clearly other or more fundamental ontological
kind. Therefore intensional definition (meaning in terms of sufficient and
necessary conditions for use) would be prejudicial until perhaps later.

What
is called for, at least to illustrate and to begin, is synonyms (above);
ostensive and partial extensional definition by example (the smell of a rose,
the feeling of thinking, and so on), and characterization (positive—‘what
it is like’, first person, marked by qualities as in the smell of a rose…:
and negative—what it is not—an object as object, the putative non
subjective aware access to a world outside experience, not third person…

Differentiated
from experience-of (but includes it so far as it real), cumulative
experience.

There is
experience

Experience
tentatively names an ontological kind.

This
is the case because the denial of experience occurs, at least in part, in
experience. Thus an illusion is experience. To assert that experience is an
illusion is to show that there is experience. That is if there is no
experience of any other existent or kind, there is experience of experience.
This is the essence of Descartes’ cogito.

Were
this kind to not be, there would be no feeling of Being; there would be
inertness but no experience of it.

The
hypothetical existent that affects no experience at al is (at least
effectively) non-existent and it is justified to regard it as non existent.

The
place of significant meaning can be only in experience (which may refer
beyond itself).

Is there more than experience?

If
we consider experience we find there is experience. It seems that there is
more—for there is experience of self or first person, experiential others,
all located in a world. In line with it seeming that there is more we perhaps
ought to say “there is experience as if of self and so on” but we do not say
that for “experience as if of” is “experience of”.

However,
that does not imply that the world is real. One might think they (e.g. the
brain) generate their experience but perhaps that experience is all there is
(this is a form of what is called solipsism).

To
address the skeptical challenge of solipsism may be undertaken to identify
the nature of the real (which may be questioned on other accounts as well).

To
do this, first consider a map of experience without subscribing to it being
real or not.

A first map of experience

Within
experience we find experience itself—pure, attitudinal, and active—and a
place called the world. Experience is found to be relational for even the
pure case is seen as constituted of inner relations. That there is a world is
the base of a standard map: the world contains selves—experiential
persons—the I and others (you, them); and the environment (universe).

This
is a high level or general map of academic and trans-academic psychology; its
purpose is to enable a conceptual hold on the real and its variety. For
detail see Psychology.

The
realism of this standard map is analyzed below in terms of two
interpretations and their possibilities of meaning.

Problem of
realism

What
is realism? If it means ‘exists independently of mind’ then note that while
that seems perfectly clear, on analysis of Being and experience it is not
clear—so reflect on this.

Interpretations

Two
interpretations of the above standard map of experience are—a substance
interpretation that regards the putative existents within experience as real
(they need not be entities alone but may include processes, relations or
interactions, and abstracta) and a neutral interpretation (which, since it
allows all logically possible instances, including the substance and neutral,
is ultimately neutral)

Substance

SSV—the conventional map as real; its
untenability

FOE—interpretation as (a) ESSV—a tenable facsimile of SSV as a special case of FOE and (b) general FOE as one mind universe. That other
than generality they are not distinct. That if the mind is conventional
limited mind it must be ESSV.
That apart from generality ESSV
and one mind universe are not distinct. Is there no distinction at all?
Yes—flimsy one mind universe is not faithful to the map which as map is true
and therefore there is a robustness criterion that must apply to one mind
universe. Both SSV and ESSV are robust but not the only
robust universes (but substance criteria rule out SSV); the Atman-Brahman universe (not a substance universe)
may also be robust.

Neutral
interpretation†

Particularly
the neutral is non-substance or, more precisely and more neutrally, it avoids
commitment to substance vs non substance or ontological kind at all except
that which emerges as (logically) necessary.

It
is in the meaning of (our) experience that we can take SSV as real for pragmatic purposes.
To maintain ontological precision, SSV
must be recognized as ESSV;
this does not change the pragmatic picture; and it allows that the particular
ESSV conforms to FOE and may be part of a larger
picture.

The
fundamental principle and analysis of experience imply that the universe is a
FOE (using the fundamental
principle does not violate neutrality, first because it makes no assumptions,
and second because it places no limit on the kinds of worlds in the
universe). It allows—multiple—ESSV
worlds as robust worlds. Also multiple substance worlds are possible,
therefore exist, and may be stable. While some substances may be labeled
‘matter’ and others ‘mind’, mind is not fully able to be dissociated from the
idea of matter for the form of mental content is the body or part of one
(i.e. it is not metaphysically possible for mind to not associate with some
body but such body need not be of our kind). Substance need not be the only
stable case. The above and more are possible and therefore real; and occur
against a void-transient background.

Challenges to realism

Alternate.“Further skeptical
challenges to realism”

Comment.Because
this is a good place for it.

Challenge—The world was created
five minutes ago, complete with geological record and memories so as to make
it seem that the world is the standard world. Resolution—this is
possible as is the possibility that the world will be destroyed five minutes
from now and the possibility that the world is in a perpetual state of having
been first cause created a second ago and last cause destroyed a second from
now; therefore these are all real; but they are not stable; therefore per FP cosmology, insignificant in number
and occupation of the block; and while they are part of what is existentially
meaningful they are their pragmatic meaning is at most small. Summary of
resolution—the resolution is not do deny the general possibility of the
skeptical position but to assess its significance generally and for robust
worlds.

Challenge—Russell’s teapot. Resolution—possible
but until discovered ‘that which affects no being and experience is
non-existent’.

Challenge—nothing is outside
experience. Resolution—below.

Is anything
outside experience?

Though
I, as a limited being, have a concept ‘the world’ within my experience, that
concept is an abstract. The question is whether anything is outside some
experience.

In
FOE there is a place called
‘self’ the experiencer, ‘world’ the experienced which includes experience and
doubles as the experience.

So
it seems that nothing is outside experience. This is analyzable in greater
detail. For example, I have an image of ‘the mountain’. But what is ‘the
mountain’? For me, what counts as the mountain is (i) further experience—the
image and its various parts, the image under various conditions, walking to
it and up it, touching it; (ii) reports and cumulative experience, to which I
ascribe reality but in fact are real-within-my experience. Pragmatically, at
least, these are objects (in the generalized sense of objects as referents of
concepts).

What
we will find from the perfect metaphysics is that on the pure abstract side
we do know existents, while on the pragmatic side there is need to different
from ‘as if existent’ from ‘existent’ and yet we also know pragmatically that
there is a reality to the existents (yet, so far as pragmatic, the reality is
relational and may be transient).

That
is, in the pure abstract as well as the pragmatic concrete, there are objects
even though they remain in experience.

More on
experience

Discussion
above anticipates conclusions from the fundamental principle and it will therefore
not be necessary to reassess experience, its map, and realism.

However,
discussion so far omits detail which is taken up in Psychology.

Being is relational

This
follows (i) from ESSV and more
generally from FOE, (ii) since
the hypothetical object that has no power does not exist, (iii) since the
hypothetical existent that affects no experience is effectively non-existent,
(iv) there is no meaningful distinction between existence and effective
existence.

However,
there is more. Since effectively all Being registers in experience and if not
is non existent (it is not said that experience causes Being but that this is
in the nature of experience and of Being) Being is (effectively) experiential
relation.

The
conceptual force of Being

The
conceptual force of Being continues to emerge and is now conjoined to
experience to bring this force ‘down’ from the abstract to the
concrete-to-sentient-sapient beings.

The
section is effectively part of a discussion of Being and experience, but is a
separate section for its general importance and level of detail.

That
Being is effectively experiential relation crucially sets the stage for
exploration, conception, and analysis of meaning.

Though
linguistic and significant meaning are quite different, they could be placed
in the same section because there is a root affinity of the concepts and
their analysis. They are however placed in separate sections to emphasize
their distinction and independent importance.

The
material in this section through Linguistic
conceptual meaning is about referential meaning which is
sufficiently general for the purpose of the essay. But referential meaning is
not a significant limit in that (i) concept meaning may be recovered by
omitting the object and (ii) referential concept meaning may be employed to
talk about general concept meaning. The term ‘concept meaning’ is not a
limitation because ‘concept’ is here employed a general sense as mental
content and which includes concepts as, e.g., units of meaning.

Necessity
and sufficiency of intensional existent (concept) and referent (object)

The
object may be necessary vs possible vs impossible (logical…); real
(existence, contingently if just possible or necessarily) vs null
(non-existence, contingently if possible and necessarily if impossible)

Intension and
extension

Comment.There
is another use of extension in connection with Being:
the totality of sameness, difference, and their absence (which includes
spacetime) within Being.

Meaning and
metaphysics

From
the very nature of meaning, it is not and ought not to be merely a free
standing system (an impression imparted by education, prescriptivism, and
some dictionaries). Rather meaning and metaphysics are essentially interwoven
and (i) richness and (ii) moving forward (from existing and received
contests) are impoverished by not recognizing this

Linguistic
meaning

Meaning
resides in simple sign-icons (semantics) and structure of signs (semantics of
grammar)… but these meanings are generally context dependent

Word meaning

Necessity
and sufficiency of intension (concept) and extension (object—note that a
collection of objects is an object or existent).

That
is, without word-icon association, words do not have meaning. The association
is sufficient to meaning but not to its completeness (for which the
extension, definite or implied, is also necessary).

Linguistic
compounds

Alternate.“The
meaning of linguistic compounds”

The
recognition of various kinds of object (thing, relation, interaction,
process, quality); kinds of word (noun, preposition, verb as action-process-interaction,
adverb as general qualifier), various kinds of behavior in the world
and their linguistic representation by convention (e.g. man hits ball or
subject noun-verb-object noun or more generally the subject predicate form)
leads to compounds (e.g. sentences) being capable by their form of having
meaning over and above the meanings of the individual words.

The
meaning of the compound is not always capable of analysis as above but is
determined by use.

The
foregoing analysis is sufficient only to a common set of kinds of behavior.
Science and mathematics require formalization, excision, supplement, and
further kinds of compound.

It
does not follow that our entire linguistic system—common and formal—is
complete with regard to the real.

Efficiency

Alternate.“Efficiency
of linguistic meaning”

Efficiency
of representation: sign or symbol over icon alone; explicitness of sign
systems; and in defined symbolic systems logic, science, and mathematics this
leads to greater and in some cases perfect certainty… but note that this
explicitness comes at the cost of impoverishment relative to intuition

Efficiency
of communication

Issue of
perfection

Alternate.“Issue of
perfection, completeness, and finality”

Cannot
be known to be and likely will not be perfect or complete or final without a
perfect or complete or final metaphysics (perhaps contextual)

But
note that the perfect (pure-pragmatic) metaphysics to be developed will be
perfect in a certain sense and for some ultimate though not all purposes

Stability versus
flow

Alternate.“Stability
vs flow of meaning”

For
definiteness of representation and communication, some stability is needed.

Because
of changing contexts over time (and place?), fluidity is also needed.

Definiteness
is also limited by the complexity and difficulty of such a task as well as
pragmatic need for workable systems (even in formal situations)

Flux
is influenced by need from changing contexts, drive to progress and change,
creativity..

Analysis and
synthesis of meaning

Some
thinkers have argued that analysis of meaning may result in new knowledge.
This may be true so far as the nature of meaning is concerned but the intent
of the argument is to show that analysis reveals new content.

Since
such analysis does not further the extension of meaning and therefore does
not create knowledge; rather it may make explicit knowledge that is already
implicit in the (system of) meaning. This of course may be useful preparation
for advance of knowledge.

When
it is recognized that synthesis of meaning (i) includes analysis and (ii)
requires the elements of knowledge discovery or creation it is then seen that
synthesis of meaning and advance of knowledge are identical

Linguistic conceptual
meaning

Linguistic
meaning is conceptual meaning associated with a system of signs that make for
efficient representation, analysis,

There
are questions about our lives that we do not seem to have complete answers
to:

Why are we here? And the related Why
is there anything at all?

Given that we have pleasure and pain—What
is the point to pain? What is the point to pleasure, especially
if it is not under our control and particularly if it comes to an end?
And Does it come to an end?

Given that we have some knowledge—What can
we know? Are there limits to what we can know? Is the
question that can be asked ever, sometimes, or always answerable?

Given that we have some achievements—What
can we become? Are there limits to it? Is the being that
can be consistently conceived only sometimes or always achievable?

Relative to the foregoing—What if any are
the limits of our realization?

How
the perfect metaphysics defuses the problem of realism from both pure and
pragmatic sides—and thus must include cosmology even though cosmology may be
distinct from a pure perspective

The role of Being in
metaphysics

The
neutrality noted earlier, makes Being potentially an ideal concept around
which to build metaphysics.

The
development that follows shows the potential to be real.

A system of
concepts centered on Being

The
conception of Being in this essay was arrived at by trial and error. The
building up of a system of concepts for metaphysics was similarly arrived at
by trial and error. Of course the ideas were already present in received
thought. However, it is crucial that (a) the concepts are re-conceived
here—i.e. there meanings are variations on received meaning; (b) the concepts
stand together as a system—the perfect metaphysics that will emerge below—of
new and in some senses ultimate explanatory power regarding the entire
universe; and therefore (c) the meanings and system while not exclusive of
others are of definite and deep significance that partakes of ultimacy.

Some
of the essential concepts are sameness, difference, and their absence;
experience, beings and Being; meaning, concept and object;
possibility—logical and natural (the natural is an example of contextual possibility);
universe, the void (together with beings, these constitute derivates from
Being: all Being, absence of Being or beings, and some Being); limitlessness
of the universe (i.e. the fundamental principle of metaphysics that the
universe is the realization of greatest or logical possibility);
knowledge—the concept and the extension—pure, pragmatic (which includes the
valid in received knowledge), and the join of the pure and pragmatic; the
perfect metaphysics and (its inclusion of) reason; identity and merging of
individual identity with ultimate Identity of the universe; and that there
are feasible paths to the ultimate.

Possibility†

Two
kinds of error in knowledge claims—empirical (between concept and object) and
conceptual (between concept and concept)… leading to fact (with science) and
logic… and thus to a uniform basis for science and logic in terms of (i)
their nature and (ii) both being empirical (understood appropriately) when
Being is seen as relational

Fact

What
facts are

The
form of fact—bare proposition; subject predicate form; other forms…

Logical
possibility

On
logic and logics

The
logics and the forms of fact (of assertions)

That
logic can subsume fact

Natural
possibility

Presumes
logical possibility

Pattern,
natural law, and Law; Laws (laws) have Being

The universe†

The
concept

The
universe has Being

There
is one universe

All
Being is ‘in’ the universe; the universe has no ‘outside’

All
significant meaning and its questions and achievements lie within the universe
and not in some unfathomable realm.

No
creation; one universe etc

The
block (the concept leads naturally to the block which is not one of the
blocks of physics—the whole or the emerging / quantum relativistic)

The void†

The concept

Definition

Properties
follow

Existence†

Alternate.“Existence
of the void”

The
void exists

Metaphysical
argument

Existence
and non-existence are equivalent (for this one ‘object’)

Argument from
the properties of the void

The
void exists together with every being as its self-complement.

The number of
voids

Except
that there is at least one, the number of voids is at least one.

The
number of voids has no significance—a void exists together with every being
as its self-complement—except that there is at least one. Note that this will
follow from the fundamental principle.

The fundamental
principle

The principle†

Statement

Demonstration
from properties of the void†

Alternate.“Proof”

Heuristic
arguments

From progress of
science

From assuming an
explanation of existence of the world†

From intuition

East
and West.

From significant
meaning

From Ockham’s
Razor applied to what does not exist

On the
heuristics

While
they are not proofs they give meaning to the principle and its proof.

Necessity as
cause of the universe†

A principle of
sufficient reason

The fundamental
question of metaphysics†

Alternate foundations††

Universal law

Existential
principle

Consequences†

The
fundamental principle is the essential driver of the metaphysics to follow.
Already it is clear that the principle is of ultimate power. The extent of
this power emerges in what follows.

The
consequences may be seen as the ‘meaning’ of the metaphysics as follows.

1.The explicit meaning lies
already in the statement of the principle, and the metaphysics to be
developed—pure and perfect—and in logic.

2.The implicit meaning lies
in the extension of consequences—the cosmology
and other topics below.

Creation and
origins of the universe†

From
its concept, if a creator is external to it, the universe has and can have no
creator or creation.

Does
self-creation have meaning? First, if given some primitive manifestation that
manifest may be an agent of creation; however, that would not be self-creation.
Second, we might see it as emerging from the void. However, the void is part
of the universe and so that is certainly not external creation and from
necessity as cause, it is not self creation in any classical sense of
creation.

One
part of the universe may be involved in the creation of another part.

The perfect metaphysics†

With
perfect dual epistemology.

Alters
significance of traditional epistemology but does not eliminate its need.

The metaphysics†

Description
with brief illustration.

Identity†

Identity
is sense of sameness of existent—general and of self.

The ultimate

The ultimate†

God, Brahman,
the Divine

There
is no God the creator of the universe. While there may be local gods, I
prefer to not use the term ‘God’ as its connotations are detrimental to
essential meaning, e.g. as they lead to the double
bind discussed earlier.

However,
the universe has Identity as do its peaks of Being in which we—our
identities—merge and participate; and which we become—in the fullest sense
compatible with our form.

The absolute

It
is not clear that the absolute has any greater meaning as a given state of
being over process.

Whatever
absolute there may be; and whatever intuition we may have of it; its
discovery, I suspect, is a process—for our form it is a process whose germ
and concept may lie within us.

Yet
it is definitely a process.

Paths to the
ultimate†

Existence
of paths to the ultimate.

Death†

See
the source above for death (1) As real but not absolute, (2) Used as a
catalyst to full living in this life and toward the ultimate—i.e., givenness
of death as two opportunities—to assess our Being in the immediate and the
ultimate and as gateway to the ultimate; particularly, regardless whether we
are finite or eternal, death informs us of the preciousness of life.

Realization of
significant meaning

The
following repeats an earlier statement—All significant meaning and its
questions and achievements lie within the universe and not in some
unfathomable realm.

Whatever
ultimate significant meaning there is lies within our grasp even if not in
‘this life’ as understood in common secular and religious cosmologies.

While
immediate meaning—meaning in this world, this life—will ever be in between
exploration and realization, meaning in the ultimate is discovery and
realization of peaks of Being. While that meaning can be understood in the
abstract and approximated in ‘this life’ its full realization requires
transcendence of life-death and this world.

Full
realization of significant meaning is (part of) realization of the ultimate.

Paths to the ultimate vs in the ultimate

For
we are already (the creation) of necessity—i.e., we are already of the real
(and debate on whether we are the absolute or potential real are unnecessary;
what is significant is that we should not take ourselves as any static real
for the real is not static).

No
higher philosophy, science, or religion is needed to know this—but it may
seem higher due to practical but not exclusive needs (they may seem necessary
and as if given)—

The adaptations of natural form seen and
experienced as only static.

Similar adaptations of culture—i.e., emergent
cultural views of the real.

General
means—reason

Particular
means—tradition

Engagement,
ecstasy, and pain†

Naïvely,
we know the universe in some of its features and some of the existents in it.

However,
it was seen that there is a sense in which we never get out of experience.

For
similar and other reasons, the possibility of knowledge at all has been
questioned on various occasions in the history of thought. To question the
possibility of knowledge is at least implicitly to question its nature—and to
question whether there is such a thing.

At
that point criticism itself becomes circular. For if some hypothetical thing
has no nature, what is there to criticize? Yet, there is value to the
criticism—as methodological radical skepticism to clarify what knowledge
might be and perhaps is, to set out criteria as to what counts as knowledge,
and to determine what of our putative knowledge counts for the real thing.

It
is an enormously difficult problem. Still, at ground level, whatever
knowledge is, it would seem that we must have some of it for our knowledge
based efforts do yield some success beyond the mere random.

But
we can begin to see that the difficulty might not be altogether
insurmountable. For surely there must be some concept of knowledge to argue
that we have no knowledge. However, if the selected concept or concepts of
knowledge imply that there is no knowledge then surely the concepts must be
erroneous or inadequate in some way.

This
is one reason to consider pragmatism. Pragmatism—or pragmaticism, a term due
to Charles Sanders Peirce—is subtle but has a simple interpretation something
is knowledge if it is about the world and if it is good enough for practical
or pragmatic purposes. This makes knowledge claims relative and not
universal.

However,
we saw above that practical knowledge claims are perfect according to a
criterion that they are the best available and perhaps even the best possible
in service of an ultimate goal revealed by the pure and abstract metaphysics.

On
the other hand, that pure metaphysics is ultimately potent as we have seen
and effectively perfectly faithful to its objects via abstraction.

The
combination of the pure and the pragmatic, each perfect in its own way,
result in the perfect metaphysics, also perfect in its own dual way, and
which incorporates the sufficiently pragmatic in the human tradition.

This
ought not to eliminate interest in the traditions of epistemology, especially
for their local interest. However, it does reassign their context as local
where the context has pretended to the universal, and it does imply that
while the search for classical perfection in knowledge is not without value,
that search ought to be in balance with action and use—and not just for
practical reasons but also for reasons of the nature of knowledge as part of
Being.

Knowledge and
action

At
root, therefore, there is no existent that could be called
knowledge-in-and-of-itself (it has also been seen that, though it does not
have universal purchase, how for both ideal and pragmatic purposes there is
such an existent).

In
other words knowledge is ever and therefore must be bound to action and
attitude as one. When we call for knowledge to be applied we have forgotten
that that is the essence of knowledge; that the case of separability and
separation of knowledge and action is in a certain (of course crucial) ideal-pragmatic
sense which includes that knowledge is ever empirical while it is also
rational (for those characteristics are joined at root). The call for
application, important though it is, has tended to forget that knowledge is
already applied and that ‘knowledge’ that is not immediately applied will be
ultimately applied or seen as not knowledge and forgotten.

Human knowledge
and action—a map

This
section is concerned with knowledge has a sufficient degree of separation
from immediate action and instantaneous empirical rooting that it may be
regarded as knowledge-as-knowledge (yet the empirical-action connection is
always there at least in the background). Such relatively pure knowledge may
of course model the embedded kind which is what is being done here.

Knowledge
claims—hypotheses—may be in error because assertions (concepts) (i) do not
correspond faithfully to the world or (ii) the assertions are compound and
cannot all be simultaneously true (e.g., because of contradiction) regardless
of reference.

The
former defines science (the recognized ‘concrete sciences’—physical,
biological-psychological, and social); the latter defines logic (science
presumes logic but logic does not intrinsically presume science).

Among
the linguistic forms are some patterns that are found to occur in many
contexts—e.g. as in counting and quantity and in shapes and sizes of
geographic and geological and other forms. While initially empirical, these
are found (i) to have structure that is independent of the application, (ii)
which structure is abstraction from particular concrete and empirical
situations, (iii) capable of abstract formulation via primitive terms and
axioms and thence to defined terms (concepts) and results (e.g. theorems),
and (iv) so to constitute abstract systems of which examples are mathematics,
linguistics, and computer science. Systems of rules for language and logic
may be considered to be among such abstract systems.

Are
these abstract systems sciences? One requirement for a science is that it be
empirical—about the world. The systems may be considered to be about the
world (i) in that they are about an abstract of the world, (ii) as formal
structures defined by signs and rules, they are about a model world, and
(iii) tentatively, in the Platonic view that they are about an ideal world
(rather than this world) and therefore we set this possibility aside for now
and return to it later. Another requirement, a consequence of the first, is
that since we cannot expect the formulation of a conceptual system to succeed
at first in capturing the world or aspect of the world, the systems must be
regarded as hypothetical and subject to trial application (testing) and
correction. Is this the case?

In
mathematics at least we have come to expect a higher degree of certainty than
in the concrete sciences. This has come about by focusing on item (ii) of the
previous paragraph rather than item (i). However, in so doing, the resulting
feeling of certainty and the intuition behind it are so strong that there is
a feeling that mathematical systems are not just formal systems but also
about the real. Certainty, such as it is, comes about because (a) the formal
systems can be examined to a degree that the world cannot—the formal systems
are linear (rather than multi-dimensional) and discrete and (b) by referring
the formal systems to—by formulating them in terms of—basic systems held
certain.

Let
us consider two examples of reference (i) a particular one—that of metric
geometry and (ii) a generic one—the basis of mathematics in set theory.

Is
Euclidean Geometry consistent? If an axiomatic system has a model that can be
exhaustively searched it may be examined for consistency; such a model would
have to be not just finite but not too large to be examined, given available
resources—i.e. it would have to be effectively finite (not effectively
infinite). But Euclidean Geometry does not have a finite model. Still we
think Euclidean Geometry is consistent because (a) it seems transparent and
no contradictions have been discovered in over two thousand years and (b) it
can be written as a formal sub theory of real numbers and is therefore at
least as consistent as the axioms for real numbers. Thus we do not expect
absolute consistency for Euclidean Geometry; but we do have a relative
consistency proof which is buttressed by the intuition from (i) above. What
of Non Euclidean Geometry? These geometries are as consistent as Euclid’s
because the fifth axiom is—has been shown to be—independent of the first four
axioms.

Most
of mathematics can be founded on a consistent set theory. After Bertrand
Russell found his famous paradox showing naïve set theory inconsistent, a
number of axiom systems for set theory were formulated in an attempt to
develop a sufficiently powerful but consistent theory. The system that is in
most common use is the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF) (usually with the
axiom of choice—ZFC—but sometimes without it and sometimes with its
negation). The consistency of ZFC cannot be proved within ZFC (unless it is
inconsistent), However, (a) ZFC is thought consistent, (b) it is believed
that if it were inconsistent, it would have been discovered by now, (c) it is
immune to the classic paradoxes of naïve set theory, and (d) there are
sub-theories of ZFC that can be proven consistent.

It
must be concluded that while mathematics is ‘practically’ certain there is no
absolute proof of certainty.

Further
we can conclude that mathematics is empirical in two ways (i) in the origin
mathematics was empirical but modern formal mathematics as a collection of
axiomatic systems has abandoned this approach in favor of power—the wide
class of structures and knowledge of the same—and at least relative certainty
(ii) in the issue of relative certainty contact is maintained with the world
at least in abstraction.

Additionally
there is a parallel between the development of mathematics and the concrete
sciences formulation of systems is inductive, development of systems is
deductive, and the outcome of deduction is tested against the world—the
concrete world in one case and an abstract of the world in another.

But
not all systems in mathematics are directly about the world; many are formed
by abstraction and generalization and synthesis. How can mathematics be said
to be universally about the world? That is, is the strong Platonic intuition
of some mathematics valid?

The
answer is simple—from FP all
consistent systems must have real objects (even if inaccessibility means that
mathematics cannot be directly empirical and formalization and the gain in
certainty means that it is at most indirectly).

FP considerably simplifies the foregoing considerations—(i)
logic is the requirement that a concept be capable of being about the world
or that a compound assertion be capable of being true and (ii) if logical,
then the assertion is a true assertion which if appropriately compound is a
science—either concrete or abstract.

We
conclude tentatively, that there are abstract and concrete sciences. As
stated the abstract include mathematics, linguistics, and computer science;
the concrete are the physical, biological, psychological, and social.

A
limitation of the axiomatic approach is that given an axiomatic system with
an effectively finite number of primitives and axioms, the number of
assertions and therefore theorems must be at most countable. That is, if the
axioms model an object whose compound structure is more than countable in
complexity, the axiom system may be incomplete. Thus there is a role for
intuition—and experiment—not just in driving proof but as a partner to
axiomatic proof. The putative abstract-concrete divide is not absolute and,
just as in history, common development and interaction ought to remain an
important source of both ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract’ sciences (the quotes are
now justified).

Is
logic a science? We have seen that logic is about relations among concepts
that are necessary for the system of concepts to be possibly about the
world—or about some possible world. That is, logic is not about the world as
an object. However, truth functional logic is about the relationship between
concepts and the world—between concepts and objects, which are, of course, in
the world—in that it is a requirement on concepts for them to have objects in
some world. In other words, logic is about the world for the world remains
within experience as concept-object; but the same is true for science since
all knowledge is relationship within the experiential field that we may
identify as concept-object. Thus, in so far as logic is discovered, what is
discovered is about the world even if it seems remotely so. Logic is a
science; and its methods must be both abstract and empirical (just as we have
seen that while mathematics benefits from emphasizing abstract roots it loses
if it completely shuts off empirical rooting). But it is also true of the
abstract and concrete sciences that they are about concept-object relations
within experience. Logic and the sciences are about relations within
experience and while their whole is about faithful relations, the distinctions
among them are distinctions among kinds of faithful relations,

While
knowledge is about the world and the question of truth, in practice because
the world is effectively infinite, one view of the best we can do is (i)
eliminate as much error as we can and (ii) supplement this with intuition of
the world.

Knowledge
claims may fail (i) to be faithful to the world and (ii) fail intrinsically
to be capable of faithfulness. The former defines science (including fact),
the latter defines logic.

The
standard divisions of science are the physical, the biological-psychological,
and the social.

In
the development of science, certain abstract disciplines arise, e.g.
mathematics, linguistics, and computer science.

—For
these abstract disciplines the prima facie approach today is the abstract
axiomatic which gives power and greater but not absolute certainty than the
standard sciences.

However,
the abstract disciplines must be at root and may also be regarded as
sciences. Thus the sciences are the concrete and the abstract.

Truth
functional logic may also be seen to be a science that partakes of both the
abstract and the concrete.

More
precisely, the truth functional logics, present and future, are sciences or
divisions of the science of (truth functional) logic.

Thus,
allowing the terms ‘logic’ and ‘science’ a most general meaning—

Logic
and the sciences (abstract and concrete0 may be seen as either logic or
science.

See
the discussion of ethics for the value of knowledge. Note, especially, that
ethics informs us on the nature and criteria for knowledge—What is
knowledge in light of different general imperatives and what criteria are
appropriate to those imperatives?

As
noted elsewhere, though there may be ethical imperatives to pragmatic vs
perfection criteria (and their union for the perfect metaphysics), this ought
not to exclude the study of the nature and criteria of knowledge from
intrinsic and traditional perspectives which, however, ought to also be
critiqued from the perfect metaphysics and other viewpoints.

The
significant human ability to introduce reflection, communication, and choice
into cycles of cognition-emotion and action results in richer personal
thought, feeling, and behavior; and richer cultural arrangement.

This
ability can override instincts for survival. This is double edged as it
permits both harm and creation and pursuit of new values.

Morals

Morals
arise because reflection alone is insufficient (and may be casually or
willfully destructive) for prevention of harm and cultivation of what emerges
as valuable.

Morals
are communal guides or rules for right behavior and good outcomes; they may
have arisen as practical matters conditioned by selection forces but are simultaneously
also an expression of reflection.

Ethics

Thus
ethics as a system of reasoning about right action and good outcomes and
states of being is continuous with morality (even though there may be
opposition).

The realms of
ethics

What
are the realms of ethics?

1.In the beginning, perhaps
morals began as simple patterns (‘rules’) of mutual reinforcement of good
behavior in primal societies (including negative reinforcement of what is not
good). Language has already begun to emerge along with the ability for
concept formation reason in iconic-linguistic (symbolic) terms. Morals become
conceptualized; it becomes possible to reason about them; this is perhaps a
slow process. A result is that it emerges that—in practice—moral behavior is
not determined by rules (alone) but by concepts of ‘right action’ and ‘good
states of being or outcomes’, reasoning about them by emerging principles in
particular situations. Among those activities, western philosophy identified
divisions ethics—meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.

2.Meta-ethics begins as the
determination of the emerging concepts, principles, and distinctions above;
it grows to include questions about the nature of the concepts and
principles—the how of application of the concepts and its justification which
begins as immanent in the notions of the right and the good and so on—of
deontology vs ethics of consequence—of ethics itself; of the nature of the
application in particular situations and to what extent that is
sufficient—which is the question of the interaction of the situations and
therefore of the interaction of ethics with other disciplines such as
economics and politics. Though there is a distinction between ethics and
moral systems, those systems may be examined for their nature and their
value; in general this will entail neither wholesale adoption nor rejection;
this is an activity falls under meta-ethics.

3.Normative ethics is the determination of
what to do in ethical contexts (the situations). While meta-ethics is
concerned with the nature of ethics, the concept of ethical value (e.g. the
good and the right), normative ethics is about what to do.

4.Applied ethics is application of ethics
in actual situations. The situations may be individual, professional (e.g.
bioethics), and general or global (e.g. political ethics).

5.Aesthetics. What constitutes
‘richness of personal and cultural life’ over and above survival and
contentment? A generic and intrinsic but perhaps subjective measure is
beauty. Aesthetics covers both the subjective and possible objective sides of
this concern; and from its nature it may be seen as part of ethics. Perhaps
beauty is related to survival and contentment—but does it not seem rather
costly when considered in relation to survival? Perhaps beauty is a drive to
‘survival’ of higher forms of greater and ultimately more robust being—not
intrinsically but sometimes locally ‘costly’? Such topics also fall under
aesthetics (‘evolutionary aesthetics’, ‘meta-aesthetics’…). A generic term is
aesthetics.

6.The term ‘ethics’ is sufficient
to the foregoing variety (the term axiology is used for the theory of value
and is seen to comprise ethics and aesthetics; however as it is seen above
this is covered by a reasoned interpretation of ethics).

It
is a preliminary ethical imperative to understand the perfect metaphysics and
its implications as discussed here and to attempt to see and overcome the double bind that arises from dogmatic
attitudes to religion and science.

When
the metaphysics is understood and intuited, an imperative of shared discovery
and realization will become clear.

‘Local
ethics’ refers to the ethics of our empirical world, be those ethics secular
or religious.

Ethics
of realization and local ethics do not determine but are overlapping and
mutually informing.

Particularly,
a focus on realization should not detract from ordinary ethics—the ethics of
knowledge, politics, economics, medicine, technology...

However,
since modern secular ethics tends to be local (e.g., humanistic) and since
traditional and religious moral systems tend to be rigid—especially with
regard to societal and cultural change, it is imperative to emphasize that
ethics of realization sufficiently and appropriately inform local ethics and
moral systems.

This
would also emphasize the interactivity necessary relative to mere
compartmentalization of local issues. The term holism may be used for this
interactivity but it should be recognized that use of the word ‘holism’
neither implies nor denies an ideological holism.

Immanuel
Kant emphasized that ‘good will’ is the only intrinsic ethical value.
However, ethics of realization further reveals and emphasizes a need for
holism in local ethics and therefore that while deontological, consequential,
virtue ethics (and others) merit consideration the actual normative modes may
be situation dependent and emergent.

Alternate.The
section may have been titled ‘Holism in ethics’ or ‘Holism and ethics’ but
that might be misleading because of the various connotations of ‘holism’ and
‘ethical holism’.

To
get at the issue of the question let us think in terms of an example. We
recognize roles of ethics in politics—politicians are expected to follow ethical
standards that are normally agreed to be independent of the political
imperatives; the principles of ethics have implications for choice over and
above moral behavior, for example the good of social and other choices made
in politics have an ethical dimension; and the principles of ethics have
implications for the kind of political system adopted over and above its
political effectiveness. Thus while democracy may be evaluated in terms of
efficiency, it may also be seen as ethically good in giving all citizens a
voice.

Thus
ethics infuses or perhaps should infuse not only particular
behavior—especially behavior deemed to explicitly lie in a moral or aesthetic
dimension—but does or should affect and infuse human action and choice in all
its aspects and at all levels.

The
issue of the section is not only that ethics does and should have such
infusion but also (1) whether and to what extent ethics and other aspects of
individual and social choice and behavior are an essential whole or a whole
because they interact, (2) how choice and action occur under essential vs
interactive holism—and what the place of traditional morals and ethics is
under such holism, (3) recognizing the difficulty of explicit ethical holism,
how is ethical outcome and behavior to be determined in contexts less than
the whole, and (4) to what extent is holist ethical endeavor implicit and
what principles and attitudes, moral-ethical-and-reflective, attitudes
encourage it.

Cosmology

The
distinction from metaphysics is not categorial but one of principle vs
detail, illustration, and application; of abstraction and necessity vs
concrete instance and a possibility-necessity continuum.

The model

The
model—see, e.g., the source above—has the following features (i) it is based
in a void-transient-stable structure model (and is pre-quantum and suggests
the quantum as a residual of the transient in the structured); the term
‘block’ does not suggest a literal cube or shape but is metaphorical for
‘given’ (ii) in a classical model world lines would not intersect (except at
possible cases such as Norton’s dome); however the model is absolutely
indeterminist and therefore also absolutely determinist; particularly
structure arises out of and creatively in a globally indeterminist universe; (iii)
world lines are wildly intersecting and represent different histories; (iv)
due to limited but real causal isolation facts are relative to locale (but
truth is not); as is logic but not in the sense that two locales can have
different propositional logics but rather in that some locales may have
further truth functional logics beyond the propositional and the predicate;
relative to the universe all facts are given and logic is superfluous except
in that it results in simplification, and (v) it explains and supports
intersection of the same identity and the same and different identities; and
the coalescing of identities in more conclusive identities up to Identity.

The elements

Summation

A
system of knowledge, reason, and action

Though
continuous with metaphysics and cosmology, it is effective organization for
‘Knowledge, reason, and action’ to have a separate section. It bridges
knowledge and action.

Comment.It
is understood that any system of knowledge must derive from a metaphysics.
Therefore (i) the system inherits any incomplete and speculative
characteristic of the assumed metaphysics, and (ii) since no system of
metaphysics is universally accepted, there may be many ‘systematic’ maps of
knowledge of which none is definitive. Here, however, the perfect metaphysics
is regarded as demonstrated and this lends definitive character to the system
presented. However, since the completeness of the metaphysics is in
principle, the system to presented is not (to be seen as) complete.

Comment.The
system includes tradition conceived as what is valid in the history of human
thought and culture up to the present. Discussion of Reason
is deferred even though the system should and does have an account of reason.

Philosophy

Philosophy—process of bridging with
the unknown; disciplines—metaphysics, logic (and epistemology), and ethics;
attention to language, concepts, and meaning (via meaning, philosophy is
about the world… via synthesis of meaning, it is about discovery); special
branches—critique of disciplines and human endeavors.

The
world divides into elementary or nature, of the group or social,
and the inclusive or universal.

Thus
a somewhat conventional set of basic realms of the world are those of
psyche, nature, society, and the universal—which form the acronym PNSU.

The
universal includes worlds—our world and worlds similar and dissimilar
to ours—and the void in communication with the entire manifest universe,
known and unknown.

The
natural includes the elementary and the living (and therefore also psyche, at
least as object).

The
elementary includes the microscopic which manifests as the macroscopic
including life. The microscopic is essential to the macroscopic forms,
especially those of life. The macroscopic are emergent forms of
organization ranging from relatively simple to complex.

From
a substance perspective—formed worlds are approximately substance
worlds—the emergent are phenomenally and relatively simple and new but not
new of substance. In the universal perspective, there may be new as-if
substances (but in the universal there are no true and ultimate substances).

Sociology

Anthropology
(cultural)

Cultural studies

Language

Knowledge

Education

Politics and
economics

Politics

Politics
is a whole. It is sometimes seen in terms of its institutions—particularly
governments, their forms, and their formal bases of power and authority (e.g.
democracy).

As
a whole it should be viewed as such—it is the mutual decision making and
influence (persuasion, force, consensus etc) in interaction with action.

Political
philosophy tends to superpose itself on this system. We then get models and
ideologies taken as reals and ideals. Individuals, groups, and nations invert
symbol and real in their thinking—the symbol becomes cause (or banner) for
the real.

Of
course, the system will do what it does.

The
question being considered here is What ought to the approach of political
philosophy?

That
there is an inherited system of political philosophy, categorization of forms
of government, and analysis cannot be denied or avoided.

However,
we should also and emphatically seek (i) to understand the whole system and
its various parts and dynamics, (ii) name and describe those parts and
dynamics—perhaps using older terms but seeking to redefine the individual
political objects and forces and to see them as a whole.

When
that is done terms like ‘liberalism’, ‘democracy’, ‘conservatism’ and so on
will not be objects in superposes system of thought but part of the dynamic.

(One
source of immersion politics.)

The
meanings of the terms tend to become fixed as symbols of power and ideology;
the approach here will seek to escape this so that they become symbols of the
real (it being understood that political philosophy already captures some but
not the whole real and perhaps also that power-ideology-symbology is perhaps
unavoidable—but that the aim is to improve upon the real and to avoid the
destructive use of symbols and approach constructive use.

Economics

…
and economic geography

Political
economics

Our
world is the world of human affairs in its present, historical, and future
related aspects; its geographical, political, and social divisions; and the
setting of all this on Earth and the entire universe.

Comment.Incorporate
to ‘the system’ above?

Comment.Though
some previous versions cover some of the content, the section is new. The use
of ‘the world’ in the essay is related to ‘our world’ but takes a general
rather than human perspective. Thus ‘the world’ refers to the universe, its
beings, and their relations.

Comment.Geography
and resources are important—I have not emphasized them before. Economic
geography and cities (vs open and sparsely populated, rural, and primitive
areas).

Opportunities
and problems

Power

This
section will be about distribution and dynamics of power in the world. It
will seek to understand, to build models or theories for understanding and
prediction, and to be informative in decision making.

Its
main example and application will be the modern world. It will identify the
main centers, their status, the dynamics, and trends and prognosis for the
future.

The perfect metaphysics is perfect knowledge
of the ultimate universe (local knowledge is pragmatic but its
pragmatism is perfect by ultimate criteria; of course traditional
criteria and knowledge of other cosmoses is not included but their
significance is diminished to the local),

The instruments of this development have been
Being and experience of Being (pure, attitudinal, and active; and
pure-abstract as well as pragmatic-concrete knowledge), all Being (the
universe), some Being (a being or beings), absence of Being (the void),
possible Being (contextual, e.g. natural, and logical), the fundamental
principle (restriction of possibility would violate the constitution of
Being).

The
foundation of (the) metaphysics is in Being—i.e. in what is there.

No
further foundation is necessary for there is no reference beyond Being (there
cannot be further foundation for there is no beyond; while this is true it
need no pertain to knowledge generally; however, it applies to the present
development, for it begins with Being.

Human
being and society emerges from the soil of Being; we are not defined by a
priori ideology, paradigm, or philosophy (for to think so would put the cart
before the horse); and if we have no clear original purpose, it does not
follow that we cannot acquire one; we can and do have a clear, definite, and
universal purpose as seen in and from the metaphysics.

That
is, the foundation (in this development) is in the immediate seen via the
lens of Being so that the immediate is not distinguished from the ultimate.

If
we were to make that distinction, the immediate would then be a substance.

There
are no ultimate substances.

It
is made explicit in the development that the foundation of Being is in
Being—i.e. in the entire world.

While
this is not obvious in advance, the developments in the essay have made it
obvious and transparent.

Epilogue

We are always at the
beginning

“We
are always at the beginning” is metaphorical; it reminds us that we seek ever
freshness, never the final peak of achievement.

We
are always at a beginning not just the beginning.

We
are not the thou art that (‘tat tvam asi’ of Vedanta)—but you are already
that… and in, of, and a piece of that (“and debate on whether we are the
absolute or potential real are unnecessary; what is significant is that we
should not take ourselves as any static real for the real is not static”).

And
as noted earlier, and no philosophy or higher insight is needed to know this
lack in explicit knowledge (‘ig-norance’) is the result of

“The adaptations of natural form seen and
experienced as only static.

Similar adaptations of culture—i.e., emergent
cultural views of the real.”